Friday 56 & #BookBeginnings: Zaremba

Zaremba or the Love and the Rule of Law

by Michelle Granas

Amazon.com: Paperback | Kindle Edition

For Book Beginnings:
Sometimes Cordelia wished she could keep her eyes tight closed for the entire journey. And yet, as her muscles tensed for the thousandth time, she knew it was impossible. 
- p. 3

For Friday 56:
How to make a decision quickly? Yes? No?
To make a possibly life-or-death decision in one second?
- p. 56

Synopsis: In Warsaw, a shy and high-minded polio victim lives a life of seclusion caring for her odd family until a chance encounter plunges her into the intrigues of dirty politics. Zaremba, a wealthy businessman, is about to be arrested on trumped-up charges and only she can save him. Swept along by events, Cordelia finds her feelings increasingly involved with a stranger for whom she is both rescuer and victim. When Zaremba disappears, Cordelia is painfully uncertain if she has been abandoned and must overcome surveillance, corruption, the media, and mounting humiliations and difficulties to learn the truth. Although set in Poland, this is a story that could happen anywhere, as young democracies struggle against the temptations of covert operations and older democracies sometimes lead them astray.

... and there's a giveaway for this one! It's a fast-paced espionage read! And it's open international!

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The Ghosts of Nagasaki by Daniel Clausen

The Ghosts of Nagasaki by Daniel Clausen

Amazon.com: Paperback | Kindle Edition

I admit it, I apostasized (the conventional novel).

Synopsis: One night a foreign business analyst in Tokyo sits down in his spacious high rise apartment and begins typing something. The words pour out and exhaust him. He soon realizes that the words appearing on his laptop are memories of his first days in Nagasaki four years ago. Nagasaki was a place full of spirits, a garrulous Welsh roommate, and a lingering mystery. Somehow he must finish the story of four years ago--a story that involves a young Japanese girl, the ghost of a dead Japanese writer, and a mysterious island. He must solve this mystery while maneuvering the hazards of middle management, a cruel Japanese samurai, and his own knowledge that if he doesn't solve this mystery soon his heart will transform into a ball of steel, crushing his soul forever. Though he wants to give up his writing, though he wants to let the past rest, within his compulsive writing lies the key to his salvation.

My two cents: This is one difficult book to review. I have been sitting on this letting my thoughts percolate because it isn't a conventional read, and so my review isn't going to be conventional either.

However Long the Night by Aimee Molloy

However Long the Night:  Molly Melching's Journey to Help Millions of
African Women and Girls Triumph by Aimee Molloy

Amazon.com: Hardcover | Kindle Edition | Book Depository

Shifting women's thinking on what is considered the norm. 

Synopsis: The story of how one of the "most powerful women in women's rights" (Forbes) is paving the way to a world with human dignity for all. However Long the Night is the extraordinary story of one woman's determination to create a movement toward change, and a better future, for millions of girls and women across Africa. Molly Melching grew up in the Midwest but was called to explore the world outside her hometown when she arrived in Senegal in 1974. There, she quickly grew invested in the fate of the Senegalese women she met. Based on her experiences living in a remote African village, she founded Tostan, an organization dedicated to empowering African communities by using democracy and human-rights-based education to promote relationships built upon dignity, equality, and respect. She forever changed her life and the lives of those touched by Tostan. Unlike many Western organizations that have tried to transform various African cultures from the outside, Melching, who was named as one of the "150 women who shake the world" by Newsweek and Daily Beast, understands that true change comes only from within. Tostan's groundbreaking strategies have led to better education for the women of rural Africa, improved health care, a decrease in child/forced marriage, and declarations by thousands of African communities to abandon the centuries-old practice of female genital cutting. However Long the Night brings together Melching's riveting personal journey with the stories of the Senegalese women and men who found the courage to lead this movement. This book is a testament to the fact that the connections between women can lead to a better world.

My two cents: I was ready to dismiss this as yet another Western-centric biography extolling a Western development worker. But instead I learned about the selflessness and dedication of a woman and an organisation that has done the seemingly impossible: change people's attitudes towards an age-old Senegalese tradition which unnecessarily puts women's and girls' health and lives at risk.

Because those little Lego men are bibliophiles too!